Bombings increase morale rather than deflating it
When it comes to bombings, it actually seems to increase morale rather than deflate it. In World War II, the German bombings of London didn’t trigger the expected mass hysteria.
In turn, the massive bombardment of Germany didn’t break the resolve. In fact, the more a city was bombed the more defiant it became.
Dresden was bombed as hard as the whole UK was, yet it still had very high morale.
This is related to how Terrorism is not about terror.
Remote misses
David and Goliath talks about how when a bombing strikes, there are three groups:
- The dead,
- The near misses, who saw the carnage and are left traumatised
- The remote misses, who have heard the blast but experienced no harm from it. They feel invincible and exhilarrated at surviving.
Most are “afraid of being afraid”, remote misses are cleansed of that fear.
Related: Warfare, World War II